


Pen Pals

by aurilly



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Epistolary, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-18
Updated: 2009-09-18
Packaged: 2017-10-02 19:36:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they are ten and eleven years old, respectively, Gabriel and Mohinder's parents sign them up to have a pen pal. They keep it up much longer than anyone would have expected---through childhood, their teens, and into adulthood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pen Pals

"I have a surprise for you, sweetie!" Gabriel's mother exclaimed one night during dinner.

"What is it?" he asked excitedly, thinking it would be dessert.

She jumped up from the table, and Gabriel's dad shrugged at him, silently letting him know that he had no idea what was going on either. She returned a minute later with a stapled blue form. "Here you go!"

Gabriel adjusted his glasses and peered at the paper. At the top were written a lot of nonsense words and numbers in very short lines.

"Huh?" he asked, looking up at his mother.

"I got you a pen pal! Isn't it great?" she gushed.

Disappointed, Gabriel continued reading, and indeed, it seemed as though the nonsense words were actually supposed to be someone's name and address.

"What do I need a pen pal for?" Gabriel asked suspiciously.

His mother flailed her arms about as she explained, "It's nice! You get to know people from around the world. It's a way to expand your network."

"'Expand his network', Virginia? He's ten!" his father protested after seeing Gabriel's crestfallen face.

"It's never too early," she chided coldly.

Gabriel knew what was going on. This wasn't about anything he actually needed; this was just one of his mother's random little ideas to make him feel like he should be different. It wasn't enough to be well-behaved and get good grades in school. He needed to have a whole _network_, like a grown-up. Whenever she got one of her ideas like this, though, there was no talking her out of it.

"How did you find this… person?" Gabriel asked warily, wondering if 'Mohinder' was supposed to be a boy's or girl's name.

"There was a bulletin posted about it in Brooklyn Prep---"

"He doesn't even _go_ to Brooklyn Prep!" Thomas Gray raged. "What on earth were you doing snooping around there, Virginia?"

Straightening haughtily, she retorted, "Just because _you_ can't afford to send our boy to private school doesn't mean he should be wholly disadvantaged."

Gabriel wanted to stuff his fingers in his ears to stop his parents from fighting. Money was the worst.

"Anyway," his mother continued after she and Gabriel's father had finished a staring contest, "I wrote the number down and called to have some names sent for Gabriel."

"_Names?_" Gabriel asked, aghast at the plural.

"Mmhmm. On the next page is the information for a little French girl who lives in Paris. Céline… I bet she's so cute. And this Indian boy. It says here at the bottom that his father is a scientist."

"I have to write to _two_ people?" he whined. This was becoming more and more of a nightmare.

"Oh, but you're such a clever boy, and so good at writing. I'm sure you can find a way to introduce yourself to both of them. Now, I want you to finish your dinner and then get to work on this."

"But I have homework!"

"It won't take long," she trilled. Gabriel looked desperately at his father for back-up, but he could tell that he was trying to gear up to fight Virginia about something else, probably something more grown-up. Gabriel was on his own with this one.

Later that evening, as he sat at his desk and tried to think of a nice, simple way of introducing himself to these poor kids whom he guessed probably couldn't read English well, Gabriel asked himself why he couldn't just get ice cream after dinner like other boys.

***************************************************************

 

_Dear Suresh,_

_My name is Gabriel. I am ten years old and am in the fifth grade. I live in New York City with my mom and dad, though I don't live in the part with the really tall buildings._

_The piece of paper my mom gave me says that you live in India. My mom says that I should write you because you're looking for someone to practice your English with. What language do you speak when you aren't learning English? I thought the British colonized it or something. What's it like there? I've never heard of Madras, where you live. Do you have any brothers or sisters? I'm an only child, so I don't have any._

_It's nice to meet you, and I'd like to learn more about you. Write back if you want to.  
Gabriel_

***************************************************************

 

"Mother, what is this?"

Mohinder came out of his room, gingerly holding an envelope by its corner. He encountered his mother in the hallway. She took the envelope out of his hands and looked at the address.

"It's for you, my sweet. This is the first letter you've ever received, isn't it?" she observed with a proud smile.

"For me? I don't know anyone from…" He peered at the return address. "From Queens, New York."

"Oh!" his mother exclaimed, as if just remembering something. "It must be from your new pen pal."

"A pen pal? What is that?" Mohinder had already learned to curl his lip in disdain, a tick that his mother always said she wished she knew the origin of.

"I had never heard of it before either, my love, but there was a notice about it in the monthly packet from your school, and I signed you up. Children from your school and children from other nice schools write one another letters. It sounded like a charming idea. And, if you are to attend a British school as your father wants, you must perfect your English."

"My English is perfectly fine," Mohinder protested. He hated his parents' constant criticism of his language skills. He always got the highest marks in his class in English---in every subject, really.

"School is one thing, but is it good enough to really _live_ in? I am so afraid that you'll feel left out with the other children if… when you go. I don't want you to feel like you can't make friends. Will you do this for me, please? Just write a letter back to…" She, too, peered at the return address. "To Gabriel. I'm sure he's a nice boy." She reached for his shoulder, massaging the space between his neck and his collarbone. Mohinder relaxed into her touch as he always did and gave in.

"Yes, mother," he sighed, and told himself that perhaps it wouldn't be so bad. This Gabriel probably wanted to write just as little as he did, and would fail to reply.

"Very good, dear. Now wash your hands and we'll have dinner. I think I just heard your father come home."

As Mohinder stood in front of the bathroom mirror, he thought about his parents' aspirations for him. He had no interest in going to school in England, and didn't know why his father insisted that getting accepted should be his main goal. He liked his town, he liked his school, he liked the small circle of playmates he had worked hard to acquire. Why must he give all of that up to go halfway around the world to where there were no mothers or fathers or anything familiar?

"Mohinder!" His father's impatient call interrupted this reverie.

"I'm coming!" Mohinder called back.

Dinner that night was a strained affair, as it always was when Chandra deigned to come home in time for it. Mohinder's mother tried to open conversation subject after conversation subject, and it took multiple attempts to get Chandra to loosen up. She tried to get Mohinder to tell his father about trying out for the afterschool cricket team, but his father only laughed at him.

"You? I doubt you could hit a ball if it hit _you_."

It was horribly unfair. Mohinder had actually performed rather well in the try-outs. Chandra had no right to make such a statement. It wasn't as if _he'd_ ever come to see if Mohinder was talented or not.

It was one pin-prick too much for the week. Mohinder had secretly long held the mantra that the only acceptable way to shirk an unpleasant task was to leave it in order to pursue another unpleasant one. That was the only way he could escape his already overdeveloped sense of guilt.

"Mother, may I be excused?" he asked. He'd already gobbled his food and was only still there out of politeness. No one was allowed to leave the table until everyone had finished. "I have a lot of homework to do tonight, and I need to get started if I am to write back to Gabriel."

"Write back?" Chandra asked before his wife had a chance to reply. "You're a little young to be conducting a correspondence, aren't you?"

"I arranged for Mohinder to have an American pen pal, Chandra. To help with his English," Mohinder's mother explained.

Chandra chewed. "I see. That's a good idea, actually. Well, run along and _write_, then," he said, and he actually sounded amused, if not even slightly _impressed_.

Mohinder jumped off his stool with a big grin that didn't leave his face all the long way to his room. _Conducting a correspondence._ It _did_ sound impressive and grown-up when put that way. He suddenly felt excited about the task.

However, upon reading the letter, the supercilious curl of disdain returned to Mohinder's lip. It was all very well to write letters to an American, but this particular one appeared to be neither interesting nor intelligent, even taking into consideration the handicap that Gabriel was a year younger than Mohinder. For all that he was supposed to be practicing his English, Mohinder felt certain that his was more advanced that Gabriel's, a native speaker. If this was all he would have to deal with, there should be no worry about how comfortable he would feel at school in England.

Mohinder sat down to write, chewing his pen as he tried to think of what to say.

***************************************************************

 

_Dear Gabriel,_

Thank you for your letter. Suresh is my surname last name, so you should call me Mohinder. I understand why you might have mixed them up, since both of them are fairly common names and you might not have realised which was which.

You say you live in New York City, but the envelope says that you live in a place called Queens. That does not make sense.

You told me very remarkably little about yourself. What are you interests and hobbies? I like to play soccer and tennis, although I am better at tennis. My father is a geneticist. That is a kind of biology. I think I would like to be one, too. I go to the International School of Madras, so I take many of my classes in English. Other than English, I speak Tamil, which is the language of this region of India. Being a large country, India is home to many native languages. I live in a bungalow with my mother and father. I have no brothers or sisters. Madras is a large city, but I don't know if it is as big as than New York, which has a population of seven million.

I look forward to coresponding with you further.

Best regards,  
Mohinder

***************************************************************

 

Although he was only ten years old, Gabriel's parents had deemed him a good enough boy to no longer need a babysitter (although Gabriel suspected it was actually because babysitters were expensive). Since the beginning of the school year, he had been enjoying the glorious quiet of always being the first person home in the evenings. Sometimes he went to visit his father at the shop, but on most days, he had three hours to himself before his mother returned home from work, and then a few screechy hours of super-human patience with her until his father came home late from the work.

Almost two months had elapsed since Gabriel had penned his stupid letters. He'd cheated and written the same thing to both the Indian boy and the French girl, changing only the part where he asked them about themselves. Once finished and mailed, his mother had, predictably, forgotten all about it. So had Gabriel. Therefore, it was a surprise when one day, after trudging home from yet another uninspiring day at school and sorting through the day's mail for his mother like he always did, he came across a battered envelope with exotic-looking stamps that was addressed to him.

Never one to break his routine even for the most interesting thing that had happened to him in weeks, Gabriel washed an apple and poured himself his habitual glass of milk before hopping up into one of the kitchen stools to read what this kid had sent him. He struggled to decipher the scrawling handwriting, but once he did, and then reread the letter a second time, he felt incredibly annoyed.

Gabriel felt like he'd been had. He'd tried so hard to be nice, to dumb it down and go easy on this poor foreign kid, only to get walloped by a flood of eloquence and look stupid by comparison. For someone who said he needed to work on his English, this Mohinder certainly had a flair for words of three syllables.

He decided to retaliate in kind. Two could play at this snotty game. Mohinder was clearly a know-it-all, and yet this provincial hick (Gabriel knew that Delhi and Bombay were the big cities to be from in India; he'd looked on the map and Madras was nowhere near them) didn't even know about the concept of boroughs. Gabriel was no retard, and was offended to be treated like one.

Gabriel read the letter a third time and slipped it into his top desk drawer. He wouldn't write back right away. Proving himself to this brat would require some real thought.

***************************************************************

 

_Dear Mohinder,_

It is good to hear from you again.

You asked about my interests. I don't really like sports. The boys who are into sports here are usually pretty stupid. I play chess in an afterschool club. I'm very good at it, because I can always tell what moves people will be able to make. I also help my father sometimes with his work. He owns a business. He makes and repairs very expensive timepieces. He says I'm very good at it for a boy my age. I really like doing it because I like it when you have finally fixed it, and everything starts ticking again. It's a good feeling to have finished a project and made something work again.

I looked Madras up in the Encyclopedia. It is bigger than New York. On the map, it looks like there is a beach nearby. Is that true? Is your school a special school? Why is it international?

Sincerely,  
Gabriel

***************************************************************

 

Mohinder was miserable.

He'd always prided himself on not being a crybaby, but even now it was no comfort to know that he was one of the few first form boys not secretly sniveling in his bedroom and in the loos. It helped even less to have the House Master and Matron give him encouraging pats on the shoulder whenever they saw him. Everyone here was stiff, cold, and unfamiliar, just like the awful chill Mohinder felt in his bones all day long from the dampness that hung in the air like a wet washcloth. He missed the sunny sweatiness of Chennai, now halfway around the world. He missed his mother's full and genuine smiles, comparing them with the thin-lipped pity he got from the grown-ups here. He missed being able to run around wherever he wanted without supervision instead of being herded like a lamb everywhere he went, as if he were some idiot five-year old. He missed having free roam of his palatial bungalow instead of living in these cramped and damp quarters, shared with a disaffected boy from Essex who never shut up about the vacation ranch in America that his parents had taken him to just before school.

Mohinder had received no such present before leaving. His father had made a huge fuss about what a privilege Mohinder had been granted by his admission here. He'd said that being sent away from home was the best thing that could happen to him, that perhaps (only perhaps) it would finally turn him into a man. He'd been told to 'not to let us down and try to make us proud', which only made Mohinder now unable to voice to his parents his fervent desire to go home. Not that he was sure he'd even be wanted back. Although his mother had shed copious tears during the weeks leading up to his departure, Mohinder's father's speeches were all delivered in such a cold tone, and failed to be accompanied by any kind of regret on Chandra's part, that Mohinder could not shake the feeling that he was being sent away, not for his benefit, but for Chandra's.

Grudgingly, he had to admit that in its own stonily intimidating way, the place had a grand kind of beauty about it. He also had to admit that that the classes here were much better than those at his old school. The classrooms were the only place where he forgot for a moment his unhappiness in a heady euphoria of intellectual stimulation that he'd never felt before.

However, so far, Mohinder had done a poor job of making friends. Tom, his roommate, had all but written Mohinder off upon learning that he'd never been skiing and wasn't interested in heavy metal (Mohinder at first had thought Tom was talking about a new kind of smelting process). Other boys may have been more compatible, but so conscious was he of his foreignness that Mohinder came off as proud and stuck-up. Instead of trying to fit in, he became overly protective of his odd ways and possessions, as if daring the others to tease him. It all resulted in him sitting at the end of long tables in the dining hall, speaking little, and getting to know the other boys even less.

Mohinder had already called his parents twice since arriving, and Chandra had seemed almost irritated by the displays of homesickness, so Mohinder felt that he couldn't very well call again so soon. Sitting alone in his draughty room, Mohinder searched desperately for some way to connect with something familiar. His eyes fell on the envelope of Gabriel's most recent letter. Poking out from the middle of a pile of papers that he'd thrown in a backpack at home and plopped messily on the desk upon his arrival, it taunted him.

This was the first time he hadn't written back immediately upon receiving it. The letter had caused him some internal struggle when it had arrived a few days before his departure. Much as he had dreaded leaving home, part of him _was_ excited to be embarking on something so big and life-changing. He'd been torn between looking forward to this completely new start and wanting everything to stay the same. Somehow, the decision of what to do about his correspondence with Gabriel became caught up in what had seemed to Mohinder an all-or-nothing decision about the rest of his life.

They'd kept it up for two years now. What at first had seemed to continue solely out of some sort of unspoken pissing contest to had mellowed into an odd but pleasant routine by which Mohinder marked the passage of time. Another reason for his delay this time was the knowledge that, now in England, their correspondence would no longer be subject to the vagaries of the Indian postal service. The familiar time gap would be cut dramatically, so he had time before Gabriel would be expecting to hear from him.

Mohinder had turned the mystery of the regular seven-week delay between Gabriel's letters into a kind of scientific experiment. Judging by the post office's time-stamped date on the envelope, it took three weeks for Gabriel's letters to reach Mohinder in India. However, also judging by those same dates, it seemed as though it took another three weeks for Mohinder's letters to arrive at Gabriel's house in New York. It was either that, or, unlike Mohinder who always dropped everything to respond within a day or two---thoughts spewing forth unreservedly and unplanned---Gabriel waited a week before replying. Based on stray comments Gabriel had made, Mohinder leaned towards the latter theory.

It fit with Mohinder's image of Gabriel; everything about his faraway correspondent suggested a fastidiousness of spirit equal to Mohinder's own, a fastidiousness he had yet to find in anyone else his age. His handwriting was neat and small, unlike Mohinder's dreadful scrawl, and there were no cross-outs or misspellings, as though Gabriel drafted and then rewrote all of his letters to make them perfect. Even the stamps were affixed to the envelopes at improbably perfect right angles. All of these little clues matched the thoughtful precision of the content of Gabriel's letters. Long gone were the days when Mohinder found Gabriel dull, immature, and uninformed.

The very passage of time that Mohinder so enjoyed marking with the letters was ironically sustained by never actually acknowledging time itself. Because of the month-long delay, Gabriel and Mohinder had slowly formed a tacit understanding not to talk about mundane daily happenings or worries that could become dated by the time the letter reached its destination.

Mohinder enjoyed deciphering these peripheral clues and adding them to the hazy non-image he carried in his head of his… at this point, he wasn't sure what to call Gabriel. Was he still simply his English-assisting pen-pal? If that was all, Mohinder would have stopped this time-wasting nonsense years ago. But was it possible to call someone he'd never actually met a friend? Perhaps not, but at this moment, surrounded by strangers and in a strange land, Gabriel was the closest thing to a friend that Mohinder had, and writing him a letter might be the closest he could get to recreating some of the pattern of his old life.

And so, sitting in his little dorm room, Mohinder stared at the letter and the comforting decision to continue writing to Gabriel all but made itself. It was with an excited sense of responsibility that he realized that he'd be mailing this letter himself, instead of asking his mother to do it for him. In a small way, it was an opportunity to rebel against the endless herding he was subjected to at school and do something for himself.

This would achieve a lot of goals, all at once. And so, Mohinder picked up his pen and began chewing it, deep in thought.

***************************************************************

 

_Dear Gabriel,_

I'm writing you from my new desk in my new room at my new school. We both live in fully English-speaking countries now!

It is very impressive here, though. The buildings are grand, the boys are smart, and the teachers very knowledgable. There is everything to like. Today we had a grand assembly.

My roommate just got back from a vacation in America. Some place where people ride horses in Wyoming. Have you ever heard of anything like that? He says it's tops. I think a vacation to New York sounds infinitely more interesting. Now that I've been in England for a few days, I've found myself wondering what the differences are between here and where you live. I suppose neither of us will ever quite know for sure until one of us has seen the other's new home.

Rereading your letter reminded me of home...

***************************************************************

 

Only one thing had changed for Gabriel over the years, and that was the absence of his father. Thomas Gray had failed to return home one night when Gabriel was fifteen years old, and after a few hours spent trying to control his mother's hysterical worry (she was convinced that he'd been axe-murdered, as if _anyone_ got axe-murdered these days under Giuliani), Gabriel took a late-night taxi to the shop to see if maybe the phone in the shop had stopped working. All he'd found was a large envelope addressed to him containing the keys to the place, some insurance policies for him and his mother, and a letter full of apologies.

Gabriel's heart broke that night. However, a year later, Gabriel's day-to-day life remained about the same as it had ever been. One day, however, he received a nasty shock. Gabriel had never done well with sudden interruptions to his routine, and so to first find no mail in the mailbox and then two minutes later to open the apartment door and see that his mother had come home before him, was unwelcome in the extreme.

"Gabey, you're home!" she waved, already brewing tea in her dressing gown and slippers at five in the afternoon.

"What are you doing home so early?" he asked as kindly as he could to hide how peeved he was.

"My sciatica was killing me, so I came home early." Mrs. Gray was starting to become something of a hypochondriac, and complained about a different ailment every day. As far as Gabriel could tell, there was nothing actually wrong with her, but she was so desperate to have something to talk about that she _wanted_ to believe that she was dying.

"Oh, well, you should probably lie down if you want it to go away," Gabriel suggested practically, but she'd already moved on to the next topic.

"I picked up the mail," she gushed, as if it was a superhuman achievement, "and I saw this. It's for you. What is it?" She waved a battered-looking envelope and Gabriel felt as though he was going to choke on his heart.

"It's nothing, mom," he said quickly, reaching her in two long, strides of his tall, gangly body to snatch it out of her hands.

"Is my little boy keeping secrets from his mommy?" she pouted, genuinely hurt, and inside, Gabriel wanted to scream for a variety of reasons, not least because sixteen-year-old boys were too old to have 'mommies'.

It wasn't a _secret_ as such. Rather, Gabriel simply preferred to keep his correspondence with Mohinder to himself. Although technically, his mother had been the one to set it in motion, it was the only thing he did that Gabriel felt was _his_, his own special thing, and he didn't want her sullying it with stupid questions and grating nagging. The fact that he always picked up the mail, and had long been old enough to pay for the stamps out of his allowance had allowed something that didn't necessarily have to be a secret to become one.

Those other kids, so long ago now that their names were forgotten, had never written back, but Mohinder always did. Sometimes, jealously, he wondered if Mohinder had other people he wrote to, if Gabriel was just one of a pack. Gabriel didn't. Never having been to summer camp, he had no other friends in different parts of the country or the world with whom he needed to keep in touch. Mohinder's letters, especially now since his father had left, were a bright spot that always seemed to come just in time to cheer him up from a day that was bad in one way or another.

And now, Gabriel's mother had found out and he was terrified that it would all be spoiled. He prayed that he could get this over with and have her forget again.

"It's just a letter," he said.

"But who is it _from_?" she persisted.

Gabriel sighed. "Remember years ago when you got me a pen pal in India?"

Gabriel hated the way his mother sucked on her fingers when she was trying to remember something. "Yes! I remember now. A boy… his parents were… lawyers, right?"

"Scientist. His father is a scientist," Gabriel mumbled, already feeling himself turning red.

"But this letter is from England," she pointed out.

Gabriel shuffled into his room to put his bag down and secure the envelope in his top desk drawer, like he always did. "Yeah, he goes to boarding school in England now," he called before coming back into the living room.

"Aren't you going to read it?" she asked.

"Later. After I've had my snack," he replied. She didn't realize she was standing in his way to the fridge.

"How wonderful that you've kept it up. I had no idea, sweetie. I want to hear all about it. Is he a nice boy?"

Gabriel knew well enough that by 'nice boy' his mother invariably meant 'smart and polite'. She asked it about every person he ever mentioned.

"Yes, he's a very nice boy," he confessed truthfully while pouring himself a glass of milk and grabbing an apple. He needed his snack more than usual today in order to gear up for the mortifying barrage that was about to come.

The questions rolled out like an avalanche, and Gabriel knew that he had been right to fear the worst. "What's he like? What do you talk about? What does he look like? Is he as handsome as you? No, of course not, no one's as handsome as my boy," she said in a sing-song voice that might as well have been to herself as to Gabriel. She came over and kissed him on the brow for no reason.

Gabriel pulled away. "How should I know? I've never met him."

"Hasn't he sent you a picture?"

"No. Why should he? I've never sent him one, either. I don't care what he looks like," he lied. "What are you trying to do, set us up?" he (sort-of) joked.

The scarily unconscious insinuation went right over her head. "No," she said questioningly and with perfect seriousness. "He's a boy. Boys can't be set up with other boys. Don't be silly. Now, let me go find a picture of you to send him."

"Mom…" Gabriel begged, but it was too late. She was already rummaging through the photo drawer.

Gabriel gulped his milk to hide his blushing discomfort. She'd hit on a sore spot, one that bothered him incessantly. He did care what Mohinder looked like. In fact, he cared desperately, and he didn't know why. He found himself scrutinizing every Indian person he saw on the street---especially the boys his age---looking at how they were put together and listening to their accents. He'd come to the conclusion that they were either unspeakably good-looking, or else not at all. Gabriel couldn't decide which camp Mohinder fell into, or _should_ fall into in his imagination. On the one hand, if he were one of the unspeakably good-looking ones, that would leave the horribly awkward-looking Gabriel feeling even more insecure about his appearance. But on the other hand, if Mohinder turned out to be one of the bland-looking ones, Gabriel would be disappointed to find that his friend was anything other the perfect person he'd built up in his mind.

Gabriel knew that he shouldn't be so invested in Mohinder's appearance, knew that it shouldn't matter at all. It was counter to everything that made what they had so special and important. And yet, Gabriel couldn't help himself. He sat up at nights wondering about it.

"Is he coming to visit?" his mother asked, still looking for a good picture of him. Gabriel thought unhappily to himself that with such an impossible task, she'd be there all night.

"I told you, he goes to _school_. In _England_. He _can't_ visit," he answered, on the edge of exasperation. She'd hit on another inexplicable sore spot. She had a knack for that.

"But there's summer time…"

"He goes _home_ for the summer. To India, where he's from," Gabriel explained. "And anyway, it isn't like that."

"Isn't like what?" his mother asked absent-mindedly.

"Like…" The problem was that Gabriel didn't know how to answer. Like the kind of friendship where they hung out and did regular things. Like Gabriel was confident Mohinder would still like him if they met in person. Like Mohinder would ever want to visit Gabriel's ramshackle apartment and drab neighborhood and nutty mother. Like _Gabriel_ would ever want that embarrassment. It was clear from reading between the lines that Mohinder was rich, _really_ rich, and that all of his friends---not just at boarding school, but even back in India, where Gabriel's social studies teacher had said that you were either really really poor or really really rich---were just as well-off. His mother didn't even have to work, and Mohinder had made enough mention of the super sweet presents he'd gotten for his birthdays over the years for Gabriel to have formed a pretty good picture of his home life. Not that Mohinder was snotty about it, not at all. But Gabriel could tell, with repressed bitterness, that Mohinder simply had little idea of what it was like to be in the middle.

Gabriel hid his inadequacies behind brainy bravado, proving to Mohinder, but more importantly to himself, that he was above the mediocrity of the rest of his life. _That's_ what made this so special, that's what he clung to in this relationship. In Mohinder, Gabriel had found someone who took him seriously. In writing to Mohinder, he somehow felt like he could escape and be his best self, the incredible person he wanted to be and knew he could be, without being thwarted by the banalities of his everyday existence. With Mohinder, there _was_ no everyday life. It was freeing like nothing else, and now here was his mother, trying to horn her way into his secret world.

She was humming to herself, not caring that Gabriel hadn't answered her question. Saying 'ah-ha!' and pulling a photo out of an envelope she triumphantly said, "Here's such a good one of you. From last summer, remember? You look so handsome. This is the one you should send to… what's his name again?"

"Mohinder. And I already told you that I'm not sending him a photo," Gabriel pleaded.

"Please? For mommy?" she begged.

"Sure. Whatever." Gabriel finally gave in and took it, aware that it was the only way to get her off his back, but he had no intention of actually sending it. He'd hide it away in a drawer and she'd soon forget all about it, just as she'd forgotten all about Mohinder after that first letter had been mailed. Hunched over and depressed, he shuffled into his room.

"Are you going to write to him now?" his mother whined behind him.

"No, I usually wait," Gabriel replied.

"Why? Why don't you do it right away? It's rude not to reply to letters right away," she nagged.

"That… that's just not how I do it," Gabriel sighed, knowing she'd never understand, and asking himself why he even bothered trying. "Mom, I have a lot of homework to do. Can I have some quiet time until dinner?"

"Ok! Studies always come first," she sing-songed.

With a whimper of relief, Gabriel shut the door to his bedroom and sat down at the desk that, at six-foot four, he'd long outgrown. Carefully, he sliced open the envelope with one of his father's old letter-openers. He felt a familiar surge of excitement. It was thrilling, getting these snippets of Mohinder's far-away and independent existence. He'd read between the lines over the years, understood that Mohinder felt unwanted by his father and that he'd been sent away to school as some sort of mysterious punishment, but being sent away to a school that sounded like something out of a movie was preferable to being _abandoned_ by one's father and smothered by one's mother---at least that's what Gabriel thought.

Not that he'd told Mohinder anything about his father leaving. It would have been mortifying beyond belief to admit to Mohinder that Gabriel and his life were really _that_ pathetic and low-class. All the same, it was an omission that nagged at him; if Gabriel was hiding something as huge as his father's abandonment, how close were they _really_? What if Mohinder was hiding something as big as that from _him_? Gabriel couldn't bear to think about it.

He pulled the bulleted list of points he'd been collecting since he last wrote Mohinder out of his school binder where he had kept it carefully folded and hidden in one of the flap pockets. He usually started a new list as soon as he mailed off a letter, preparing himself and not wanting to forget any good ideas that came to him at random. He knew he wouldn't start writing for another couple of days, and then he'd perfect it over the next five---a schedule he had randomly imposed upon himself since the very beginning and continued to keep---but he liked to check immediately upon reading Mohinder's letter that all of the points were still appropriate in a reply. Any that wouldn't fit based on what Mohinder had written, he crossed out.

Everything except the bit about the science fair seemed alright. With a secret smile, Gabriel folded his list and slipped it back into his binder before settling down to do some homework.

However, Gabriel's mother's nagging had seeped into his brain, because as he did his homework that evening, Gabriel found himself thinking even more obsessively than usual about what Mohinder might look like. He knew it was sick and dangerous. He shouldn't be thinking that way about boys. It was wrong and a sin. The self-analytical part of him knew that he was projecting all sorts of disparate wants and desires and confusions onto the semi-imaginary figure of Mohinder, but he couldn't help it. He wanted him, wanted him even more _because_ he was semi-imaginary. He woke up in the middle of the night sometimes, panting and hard and frustrated, from a dream about Mohinder---sometimes with a face, sometimes without, sometimes in shadow, sometimes innocent, sometimes more sinful than anything his mother had ever told him about. He knew he should force himself to stop, to control it, to remind himself that it was madness to want something like this, but he simply _couldn't_ give up the one unblemished dream he had left.

***************************************************************

 

_Dear Mohinder,_

It's been a quiet couple of months. I've been reading Crime and Punishment. Have you read it in school yet? It's about a guy who wants to prove to himself that he's above it all and kills an old lady, and then accidentally another one… sort of. It's really interesting, and I like the idea that maybe there are special people who have the right to do whatever they want. I don't know if I could ever do it, but I can see his thinking. I'm only halfway through, so I don't know what happens yet. You should read it and tell me what you think.

I started school again last month. Junior year is just as underwhelming as sophomore year was. I know I've said it before, but you're so lucky to love your school. You have no idea how badly I wish I could go to Harrow, too. That would be fun, right?

A funny thing happened this week. My mother saw your letter and asked me about you. She was the one who got me to write you in the first place, do you remember? But she forgot all about it. She forgets a lot of stuff. Anyway, she was asking about you, and I realized that although I feel like I know you really well and have 'talked' to you a lot for years, I've never had to talk about_ you. It weirdly made me feel like you were more real. Does that make sense? Anyway, I started thinking about what that means---to be 'real' to another person. I know about things that you like and things that you think, but I don't really know what you're _like_. What I mean to say is, I don't know what you're like with your other friends, if you're a morning person, or if your hands get really cold like mine do or what color your hair is. I don't even know if I want to know these things, but talking to my mom about you made me think about it. What do you think?_

We took a big class field trip to Washington DC two weeks ago. People were acting like idiots, thinking only about hooking up and stuff, and they weren't paying attention to the really interesting things that we saw. I'd never been to DC before. The Smithsonian museum was really cool. They have a lot of airplanes and other mechanical stuff. I really like machinery. I think it would be cool to invent something that would change the world, something on the level of the train or the car or the airplane, you know? I guess in that way, we're alike. We both like science, but different branches of it.

I guess you've just started school, since you usually seem to start almost a month after I do. It's your last year, right? I can't believe you're going to have to apply to college and everything. I'm sure you'll get in anywhere you apply. What university has the best genetics program? You should think about applying to schools in the US, you know. There are a lot of good science programs here. If you want to ask me about them, I can do some research… Just let me know.

Until next time,  
Gabriel

****************************************************

At seventeen years old, Mohinder was short for his age and desperately awaiting the growth spurt that, given the height of all of his relatives on both sides, he felt genetically assured was coming. He overcompensated for his short stature by employing a constant brusqueness of manner and a quick temper that often flared. Luckily though, other than sometimes coming across as a prig, Mohinder's manner rarely ever caused any actual trouble. His main form of rebellion lay in not cutting his hair, and the fact that he had no mother to cluck over him nine months out of the year made this possible. It hung, in luxurious rock star curls, around his too-pretty face and too-chiseled jaw (the one feature that countered his height to make it clear that he was no longer a little boy), framing skin that while unblemished by acne, had turned sallow after months in England.

Mohinder was on the train back from a weekend spent with friends in London. He, Mitchell, and George had descended upon Mitchell's parents, eating an army's worth of food, and enjoying a trip to the theatre with Mitchell's mother before going out to a pub and feeling very grown-up, indeed. Mitchell had successfully chatted up a pretty girl, which had made them all very proud, but it was quickly ruined when George became sickeningly intoxicated and needed to be taken home. Until that point, Mohinder had sat in the corner, smiling back at the many girls who smiled at him, but feeling too awkward to approach anyone.

"You're a pansy, Suresh," Mitchell was teasing.

"How?" he retorted.

"You don't know how to close," George agreed. "If I had your face…"

"I'm glad you don't have my face. That saves it from being stuck into filthy toilets," Mohinder quipped.

Mitchell laughed. "Good one."

They went on like this for a few more minutes. Mohinder loved these train rides, loved these weekends with his friends. With a pang, realized that chances like this were slipping through his fingers. It was already December; after this, they would only have one semester left before of school. He was mostly assured of going to either Oxford or Cambridge, but it wouldn't be the same.

That first year had been rough, but by the second he'd warmed up (even though the weather hadn't), and Mohinder had allowed a few people to get past his hedgehog exterior to find the quick grins and hyper-caring person hidden within. By now, his fifth year, he had gotten used to it, stopped being lonely, and even slowly learned to love Harrow---just like all the House Masters that first awful week, so long ago now as he joked with his pals, had told them.

But now there were preparations to leave. The stress of university applications was taking over the year, and this was the first weekend in months that he'd taken off instead of working. Pressure came not just from the school and from his parents, but also from himself.

"What are you doing for the holidays, Mohinder?" Mitchell asked.

"I'm going on a research trip with Jenkinson to Madagascar to study the biology of the frogs there. I'm stoked." Jenkinson was the headmaster and had personally selected Mohinder for this honor.

There was a pause.

"Stoked?" Mitchell asked.

"You know, Suresh, if I didn't know better, sometimes I would take you for a Yank," George joked. "You come out with the strangest expressions sometimes."

Mohinder smiled disingenuously, thinking of the letter he secretly carried in his backpack. He'd picked up the day's mail on the way to the train but hadn't yet had a moment alone to immerse himself in this edition of what he liked to call 'the decoding of Gabriel'.

In the early years, Mohinder had taken most of what Gabriel said at face value, but as he'd gotten older, he'd learned to peer into the cracks, the holes, the imperfections that Gabriel so desperately tried to cover up. Mohinder was not only scientifically-minded, he was also an excellent student, and the fact that his entire relationship with Gabriel existed on paper made it much easier for him to study and understand this one person than it was for him to understand anyone else.

It was also the one true extra-curricular activity Mohinder had. At boarding school, 'extra-curriculars' like sports and community service and clubs were basically part of the regimen. From morning until bedtime, Mohinder did what was assigned. Much as Gabriel had expressed envy of Mohinder's supposed independence, Mohinder longed to be able to separate his life in some way into the things that were required and the things that were just for him. Writing Gabriel and calling his parents were the only things that he had to hold onto to remember who he as a person separate from his school. But unlike the calls to his parents, this was a secret.

He knew there was nothing shameful about it, but he instinctively knew that most boys did not continue writing to their childhood pen pals at his age, if they ever did at all. Between his short height, his overly-pretty face, his studiousness, and his foreignness, there was already more than enough material for the other boys to tease him about, and he wasn't about to give them even more fodder. And, irrational as it was, Mohinder didn't want the barbs of the other boys tainting the one thing that had remained constant from his old life in India, so long ago and far away now, through high school, and which seemed like it would remain all the way into college.

Something that had recently started to bother him, however, was the way Gabriel had wholly ceased to talk about his father. He had no basis for his conclusion, but he simply couldn't believe that Gabriel would omit to tell him if he had actually died, and so he ascertained that something else must have happened, something that Gabriel was too proud to admit.

****************************************************

  
_Dear Gabriel, _

This will be very quick. Can you believe that I have tried three times to write you in the past two weeks, but each time, either I have absent-mindedly mislaid the piece of paper, or my pen has run out, or someone has interrupted me. I know you are probably waiting to hear from me, because more time than usual has elapsed, so I just wanted to make sure that you know that I am thinking of you and intend you write you something very juicy and long as soon as I have a moment. This entire semester has been one long sleepless night. The pressure to get into Oxbridge is fierce. I'm sure you'll understand it next year when you go through it. What if I fail, Gabriel? What if I don't make it in? I know the probablility is low, but I can't help but worry. I could never go home again having failed. I could never show my face around school either. I would belong nowhere…

Anyway, I meant to write simply to let you know that I am alright, not to begin an entire essay.

More soon, I promise, as soon as I have a moment (I hope I get a moment to put this in the post),  
Yours,  
Mohinder

****************************************************

College was perhaps the most disappointing thing that had yet happened to Gabriel. Money was tight at home, and although he'd gotten pretty good scholarships to a bunch of schools around the country, Gabriel's mother had used all her tried and true guilt-tripping methods to make sure that he went to college in the city and continued to live at home. He was trying to be a good student, but now in his third year, Gabriel realized that it had been the worst decision he'd ever made. The sameness of his existence was starting to eat away at him. He came home to the same apartment he'd lived in his whole life. He ate the same snack. He listened to his mother's same rants. Getting a degree was all well and good, but it wasn't granting him the new life that television and the brochures had promised.

Well, there _were_ some changes, but they weren't necessarily all they were cracked up to be either.

For example, the 'date' he was currently on. She was some chick from his sociology class, and she'd asked him to go for coffee with him at the Starbucks closest to the Hunter campus. He didn't really understand why, but if he didn't come home with a story about having been out with a girl soon, his mother was going to nag him to death.

Ellen was completely ordinary, and Gabriel couldn't have been less interested. She dressed in the same boring jeans and J. Crew sweater uniform that every other girl did. She talked about the same boring nothingness that everyone else talked about, the kind of topics that are forgotten by the next day. She was blandly pretty, with mousy brown hair and brown eyes. Gabriel's mother would have loved her, he thought grimly to himself.

Still, he wished that he could care. He wished that he could feel compelled to give her the kind of look that she was giving him. But he couldn't. She left him cold. Almost all girls did. Gabriel didn't really want to think about what this said about him… but then, almost all men left him cold in that way, too. They were all too quotidian, boring and stupid and ordinary. All the same, he wished he could feel excited about more people, even in a regular way, if not in attracted way. With so few friends, and so little in his life, he felt as though everything was slipping by him. He knew that it was wrong to increasingly want to cut himself off from other people, but these days, all he wanted to do was be by himself.

Against the knowledge of his mother, he'd taken to spending a lot of time in the shop recently. It had remained locked up since his father's departure, years ago now. They still owned the place, but he and his mother never talked about it. However, one particularly listless day, Gabriel had decided to give into a long-growing desire, and found the key. Everything remained the same as it had been when he'd last visited. The watches on display, the tools, the humming of the worklight. He'd loved it there as a child, and now with his father gone, it was the only place that felt like his own. Nowadays, most of the time that he claimed to be spending at the library was now spent there. Sometimes he'd study, but sometimes he'd work on a delicate Swiss piece that he and his father had used to marvel. It was the only thing these days that made him happy.

The problem with that was that it left him with relatively little conversation. It was a problem, not just on this date, but in other areas, as well… The struggles with insecurity he had long battled was now feeding itself with his new lack of interaction with others. The less time he spent with people, the less qualified he felt to spend with them.

"Isn't it just _great_ here?" she was asking him. "I mean, I know this is our third year and all, but I'm still so _awestruck_ by the city. It's like I've been waiting to live here all my life, like I've always been a New Yorker and never known it."

"I've actually lived here all my life, so I'm kind of over it," Gabriel responded dully. She was one of _those_ people. Ugh. The kind from god-knows-where who come to New York and act like they own the place. She'd never lived through the hard times, she'd never experienced anything real. She lived in some ridiculously nice little studio that her parents were paying for. She'd probably never been to another borough. She probably didn't even know what another borough _was_.

She quite obviously wasn't special enough for him. Maybe his mother wouldn't approve after all.

****************************************************

_Dear Mohinder,_

I'm sorry it's been awhile since you've heard from me, Life has been busy… you know how it is. Congratulations on getting into your graduate program! I'm sure you were a shoe-in, anyway, so it isn't really a surprise. I guess you'll still be at Cambridge, right, so it isn't much of a change.

Not much here has changed either. In fact, I have very little to report. I haven't been doing much reading outside of schoolwork. School has been very busy.

Anyway, sorry this is so short. I promise I'll have more to report next time.

Sincerely, and congratulations again,  
Gabriel

****************************************************

A day job in a glass-plated office building, late nights spent in bars… These were not things to which Mohinder was accustomed. In fact, pretty much everything about the previous two months had been new and different, yet exhilarating. He felt as though he was being bad, for the first time, all the time.

Not that he had never partied, of course. He was 24 years old, for heavens sake. But he had always done it in a very controlled way, with few surprises and very little rushing or bustle. Therefore, it was with extra clumsiness that he navigated this particular night. He and his friends had been running and stumbling down lonely streets for what felt like an age when suddenly Mohinder got one of those flashes of inspiration that come only to the young and drunk. He slowed his pace, trying to allow the others to get ahead of him. They wouldn't let him, however.

"Come on, Suresh! _Vite!_ There won't be another bus for an hour!"

Victor and Stacy slowed down as well and tried to pull him bodily down the block as they ran towards the stop, but Mohinder lost his footing, stumbled, and wound up in a heap in the middle of the sidewalk.

"Don't worry about me! I'll walk," he said calmly, waving them away. Mohinder was desperate to be alone now that he'd thought of this brilliant plan. The last thing he wanted was to head back to his sad little dorm room. He'd been heading back to sad little dorm rooms for over half his life. He'd come here to _live_, not for that. It had been a long evening of sitting, drinking, changing locale, and drinking some more, and Mohinder was feeling _tired_, too tired to run for a bus.

"It's too far and you are too drunk," they retorted. Victor and Stacy looked conflicted as they looked back and forth between Mohinder and the bus pulling into the stop. Finally, they looked at one another, shrugged, and left him there to run for it.

Mohinder's new friend Sophie was the only one who came back to try to get him. She was much smaller than he was, and it was only through the surfacing of some still-present gentlemanly instinct that he allowed her to help him to his feet rather than sitting there obstinately, as he could have. She put an arm around his waist and looked adoringly up into his eyes. "We must get you home."

Feeling crafty, he nodded and walked with her as far as the bus. He and Sophie were the last in line to board. Mohinder queued up behind her as though about to follow her, but once she was safely on, he quickly jumped down the steps and out of the bus.

"What are you doing?" she called from inside.

"Vous venez, ou quoi?" the driver demanded with irritation. Mohinder shook his head firmly in the negative at stood his ground.

Looking at Sophie and their other friends through the window, he shouted, "I have something I need to do. I am not that drunk, I swear. I'll take a taxi home."

"What could you possible have to do at this hour? It's almost three!" Marc-Antoine yelled, but the driver slammed the door shut before Mohinder had a chance to respond. He waved at his friends as the bus pulled away from the stop. He stood looking after it for a minute with his hands in his pockets, ignoring the almost immediate ringing of his phone; Mohinder wasn't in the mood for explanations When the bus was out of sight, he looked around him to see what his options were.

With the crowd from the night bus gone, the dark and dirty street was now deserted, save for a couple of drunken stragglers cursing and shaking their fists in frustration. With a wide and private smile, Mohinder turned on his heels and started heading for the crêpe stand that he knew was only a couple of blocks away.

****************************************************

_Dear Gabriel,_

I haven't heard from you in quite some time, and decided tonight to check in. I hope everything is alright. It's odd to know that almost anything could have happened to you and I would have no idea. You are literally the only person with whom I carry on a paper corespod correspondence. I used to sometimes wonder if we should have switched over to email along with the rest of the century, but I like things as they are now. How do you feel about it?

You might be interested to know that instead of a dorm room or my bedroom back in Chennai (it's still strange to call it by its new name), I am writing you from a beach bench on the oldest bridge in Paris. There is a light over me, and people making their way home after a long night. It's 3am right now, and I've just finished a crepe. You can probably see the nutella stain on the bottom of the page.

I'm fairly certain I told you that I was applying to be here for this summer and for the next semester, but it has been so many months that I can't be sure. Either way, as you can probably tell, I was accepted and am now here. I started an internship at a pharmaceutical company a few weeks ago, and it will last until the end of September. The pay is incredible, much more than I would will would make as an academic. I have also signed up for a lot of classes in subjects I've never taken before---entrepreneurship and patents. I don't know what has come over me. I spent all my life wanting to follow in my father's footsteps and never considred anything else. What if I can help people in some other way? I should try. My father says that pharmaceuticals is probably a good fit for me, that being a cog in a wheel is all I'm cut out for. I'll show him.

What has happened to me, you may ask? I've asked the same thing of myself. My girlfriend back in England says that I'm going through a quarter life crisis. She says that's a term you Americans have coined for this.

I have a girlfriend. Did I tell you that? Her name is Mira. We were set up last summer when I went home to visit my parents. She is studying at Oxford, which is why I didn't know her. She is getting a PhD in biology. She is very good-looking and from a good family and smart. All the things I should want.

However, enough about me. The reason I decided to write to you right now is because while I found myself thinking about you quite a lot today. I was out with some of my 'friends' here, but it didn't feel right. It has been so many years since I have immersed myself in a place where I don't know a healthy number of people that I find myself having a hard time feeling at home with these new acquaintances. I was reminded of how I felt back when I first started Harrow and how writing you made me feel less lost. Perhaps writing you will do the same again now.

I was also thinking of you because I am almost certain you would hate it here. There is so little sense of order here. Prices are often invented and everything is run with the least efficiency possible. I've stepped in dog shit almost every day since my arrival. I myself can't quite tell whether or not I love it or am frustrated. It's probably a little of both. I don't know if I love Paris or if I'm invi intrigued by the relatively normal, working adult life I'm experimenting with.

Please write back soon! Tell me anything you've been doing or thinking about. Have you read anything interesting since you last wrote? You know I love hearing your ideas about books, and it's been awhile since you've given me a recommendation. I suppose I've gotten used to hearing from you regularly over the years, and the lapse has been bothering me, which is why I had to write tonight. Or you could even send me an email. I'll write my address below. It would be a strange but welcome treat to see your name pop up in my inbox one day. I was just thinking how odd it is that after all these years, I still have no idea what you look like. Do you ever think about that? Don't most pen pals send pictures? We never did. I would send you one, but there is nowhere to procure it right now. If you send me one in your next letter (or maybe a digital picture, how modern!) I will send you one in return.

Yours,  
Mohinder

PS-I'll let you in on a little secret, Gabriel. It's 3am and I'm completely pissed right now. My apologies if I sound rather crazy. I intend to mail this tonight before I sober up and regret anything I have written here.

****************************************************

It wasn't really that late, but with Daylight Savings Time not yet adopted, the sun had already set before Gabriel had gotten up to turn on more lights in the shop. With nothing else to do and no one to go home to, he had decided to stay awhile longer and work on his 1917 Swiss piece. It had been a busy day, actually, full of people walking in to get things repaired or to admire the antiques placed strategically around the room. Therefore, his reaction when yet another customer entered the shop was more than usually blasé. Gabriel's attention went immediately to the man's watch, hoping to get this over with quickly so that he could get back to his personal task. It was so simple as to hardly be a job at all, as distracting as a fly. Gabriel's father had long ago taught him that eschewing payment for this kind of thing built the kind of karma with the neighborhood that was good for business, so Gabriel waved away offers of compensation.

However, there was something in the man's reaction that wasn't like all the others. He took his glasses off in order to finally actually see the kindly-looking older Indian gentleman.

"I came to find you," the man said when Gabriel called him out on not having come for the watch. "My name is Chandra Suresh. I'm a geneticist."

Gabriel only barely heard the rest of the man's short and vague introduction. Something about a theory about humanity and how Gabriel might be a part of it. He registered it, of course---the fact that someone, _anyone_ had come looking specially for him would always be exciting---but he was stuck on 'Suresh the geneticist'.

Having handed Gabriel a book and a card, the man bade a still reeling Gabriel farewell and headed for the door. It took Gabriel a second to come out of his daze, but once he did, he scrambled from his desk and got to the door just as it had shut behind Chandra.

"Dr. Suresh!" he cried into the street, for the first time in years not caring whether or not he was making a scene.

The man turned around and started walking back towards the shop with a kindly smile. "Yes, Gabriel?" he asked, re-entering the lamp-lit space.

"Do you have any children?" he blurted out.

Chandra stiffened and shook a little, visibly pained. Resting his hand against the door, his voice became brittle and cautious as he finally answered, "I have only a son. Why do you ask?"

Gabriel had no logical reason to lie. In fact, it would have made more sense to tell the truth. But in a flash, he remembered what Mohinder had said between the lines about his father. Chandra's reaction and stilted answer to what should have been a straight-forward question was another signal to play this close to the chest.

"I just… I don't know. Before I read your book, I wanted to feel like I knew you somehow. Knew something about you other than science. I often look up facts about writers before I read, even for novels," Gabriel lied smoothly with a disingenuous shrug. He'd never really done this before and he was amazed at how easily wearing a mask could be. "It's just a habit of mine."

It seemed to work. Chandra's body language softened. "I see. That's a very nice idea, actually." Gabriel could tell that Chandra didn't actually care about his habit, that he was just buttering him up by any means necessary so that he could come back and talk about whatever it was that the book was about. "Yes, I have a son. He's about your age, or perhaps just a couple of years older. His name is Mohinder."

Gabriel stifled a gasp. "I'm sure he looks up to you. Maybe became a scientist himself?" he dangled encouragingly, just to be sure.

"How on earth did you guess that?" Chandra asked, and when Gabriel shrugged innocently, he relaxed and added, "I don't know about looking up to me, but he did become a scientist. He's a professor. An _assistant_ professor," Chandra said, and the word couldn't have dripped with more derision, although what higher level Chandra expected from a 27-year-old, Gabriel didn't know, "of biology at Chennai University. He could have and should have stayed and taught at Cambridge where he did his studies, but for some wild reason, he wanted to come home and teach in India. I've never understood his decision."

"I'm sure he had a good reason," Gabriel offered, trying his best to keep the elation out of his face and tone. "Thank you for sharing that with me. Now I feel as though…" He cast around for the right phrase. "As though I have a personal angle to hold onto as I read your book."

Chandra laughed. "Well, there's definitely nothing about _Mohinder_ in there. Not by a long shot," he said bitterly, and Gabriel had a feeling that there was something else going on entirely, something that had nothing to do with him or the book or Mohinder, something that Chandra was hiding. But without knowing what sort of thing it was, there was no way Gabriel could get it out of him.

"It doesn't matter. Thanks again. Goodnight!" he said firmly, ready to be rid of the man now that he'd gotten what he wanted out of him.

"Goodnight, Gabriel." Chandra exited the shop for the second time in five minutes and Gabriel staggered back to his workspace. He looked at the back of the book Chandra had given him. Apparently, the book was about the possibility that there were people with special, magical abilities out there, that such things were merely part of human evolution?

Did Chandra really think that _Gabriel_ was one of these people? It would seem so, given what he'd said. A surge of power and belonging and _fulfillment_ overtook Gabriel as he opened the back flap and studied the black and white photo of the face he had just finished looking at. He wondered if Mohinder looked like his father. Chandra was nothing to write home about---one of the 'funny-looking" Indian men that as a child Gabriel had noticed. But one never knew. Perhaps he had a beautiful wife whom Mohinder resembled.

Enough pointless speculation, Gabriel finally decided. Destiny had played into Gabriel's hands. What were the odds of _Mohinder's father_ coming to him like this, telling him that he might be special in some way? That couldn't be coincidence. He'd always known that something extraordinary would and should happen to him, that he deserved chances that other people didn't have. And here it was. Gabriel hadn't felt the need to grab something by the horns like this in his entire life.

The only stop he made on his way home was in a corner store to purchase a ten-dollar telephone card. Then it was up to his apartment to turn his old, slow, dial-up computer on. Gabriel paced around the living room as it booted, whirrs and clicks and whooshes matching the expectant and inarticulate noises in his head.

It barely occurred to him that Mohinder might be over it, over wanting to talk to him. But how could he, Gabriel reasoned, when Gabriel was still so excited about _him_? Plus, even lapsed interest had to be rekindled in the face of such a series of unlikely events. Something powerful had thrown them together, kept them together even as they tried to drift apart.

The computer finally finished its waking rituals, and Gabriel sat down in front of it. As Mohinder had once told him long ago, both his surname and first name were quite common, but there was only one assistant professor of biology at Chennai University. After an hour's frustrating effort, he found a webpage with the numbers for the biology department, and saw Mohinder's name listed among the other professors. After writing down the number listed next to his name, Gabriel turned off the computer and scratched out the pin number on the back of the phone card with fingernails that twitched almost too feverishly to complete the task.

Gabriel stood up, too nervous and excited to sit. He knew he was being connected when he heard the phone ringing that odd single-tone ring that always happened when he called other countries. He ground the heel of his palm into the table to channel the fidgetiness out of his voice and focus it somewhere Mohinder couldn't notice.

"Hello?" Mumbled, and with a slight tinge of irritation, there wasn't much to tell from just a hello. It could have been a receptionist, for all Gabriel knew.

"May I speak with Mohinder, please?" Gabriel asked.

"This is _Dr. Suresh_ speaking. How may I help you?" the surprisingly generically British voice all but snapped. All Gabriel's childhood studying of Indian accents had failed to prepare him for the clipped, upper-crust inflection that came to him through the phone.

Clutching the phone like a vise, the words came tumbling out faster than he could control them. "Mohinder, this is Gabriel. Gabriel Gray. You---"

Gabriel heard a wooden chair slide sharply across a wooden floor with a nasty squeak, and he knew that now Mohinder was standing, too. "Gabriel Gray!" Gone were the irritation and tired-sounding mumble. Gabriel thought his name had never sounded quite that good. "I can't believe it. Is it really you? It's been years…"

Ever precise, Gabriel interrupted, "Three."

Mohinder barely registered his addition. "How… this is wonderful, and wonderfully unexpected. How… how did you find me? How are you?"

"I'm okay, I guess." Gabriel realized that after their ecstatic beginning, he was at a loss of conversation. He hated to admit it, but this was starting to feel like a conversation with any old stranger; he and Mohinder had never spoken before---only monologued at one another, really. Lacklusterly, he added, "How are you?"

"Eh. Same as ever." He could hear that Mohinder, too, was feeling flustered and lost.

"That can't be true. You're a professor now. That's a big change from the last time we were in touch."

Mohinder laughed. It was a glorious sound. "That's true. I am. How did you find me?"

"Google. I guess I could have done it before, but... you know." Gabriel winced as he remembered that last letter Mohinder had written months after Gabriel had made the painful decision to let the correspondence end. He'd been so ashamed of his lot, and somehow too lonely to continue reaching out to Mohinder in that way. He'd felt that they'd reached a point where either they should intensify the relationship---with emails and phone calls---or else drop it. Gabriel hadn't felt comfortable enough with himself to do the former, so he let it drop rather than face possible humiliation. Plus, it was clear that his confused imaginary feelings for his faceless friend were probably unhealthy, so it was best to stop. The last letter he'd gotten from Mohinder had been that drunkenly affectionate one from Paris. As usual, Mohinder was out and about, a world traveler, while Gabriel was stuck in the shop, going nowhere. Gabriel had put the letter away in a drawer and never answered it, but he still read it sometimes.

"I know," Mohinder replied, and he sounded just as wistful as Gabriel had felt all this time.

Gabriel felt them about to lapse into an awkward moment, but then remembered what had provoked this call. He cleared his throat. "So the reason I'm calling today… The most incredible thing happened."

"And what is that?" Mohinder asked, half in a chuckle.

While Gabriel could almost hear Mohinder relaxing into the conversation, Gabriel was gearing up for maximum drama. With ironic nonchalance, he tossed out, "I met your dad."

"What?" All the camaraderie of the past minute---of the past fifteen years---disappeared in an instant to be replaced by hesitation and suspicion. "Where? How?"

"He came to my shop. I took over my father's shop. Did you know that?" Gabriel was so rattled now, both by the exhilaration of actually speaking to Mohinder, and also by Mohinder's reaction, that he now couldn't remember what he had and hadn't told the man. That was old news, however. The real news was that Gabriel was on the cusp of greatness, about to be someone special and interesting.

"No, but I assumed you had," Mohinder rattled off matter-of-factly. "What did my father say?"

Gabriel described the brief meeting, how he had put two and two together to feel sure that Mohinder must be this man's son, how Chandra had left Gabriel with a book---

"Oh shoot. I forgot the book at work." Gabriel interrupted the end of his own tale to look around him in dismay. He'd meant to read it that night, to start right away, but in his excitement about Mohinder, he'd left it on his work table.

There was a pause. "You did? That doesn't sound like---" Mohinder stopped himself.

"Like what?" Gabriel asked, smiling, because he knew at least a handful of answers that it ought to be. 'Like you' or 'like something I thought you'd do'. Mohinder apparently knew him as well as he thought he knew Mohinder.

"Did you tell him about me? That you know me… or, well, at least sort of know me?" Mohinder was guarded, and Gabriel imagined him piecing together the information.

"No, I didn't. But it's no big deal. I figure I can just tell him when I see him again, pretend that I wanted to make certain before bringing it up."

"No, don't," Mohinder exclaimed. Then, even more desperately, "Gabriel, I don't like this. I don't want you becoming my father's lab rat. I don't want you talking to him. Please, promise me you won't."

For the first time since the night little boy Gabriel had received Mohinder's first letter, Gabriel felt annoyed with him. "Why the hell not? What if he's right? What if I _am_ special? Who are you to tell me to throw this chance away? Just because he isn't interested in _you_…" Gabriel stopped himself before saying anything too unkind. His eagerness to reconnect with Mohinder had until this moment clouded his first joy. Chandra's arrival had fulfilled a lot of dreams that he'd long held. He was giving him a chance to be someone. It was also a chance to get to Mohinder. Gabriel hadn't realized that the two would conflict.

Without acknowledging what Gabriel had been about to say, Mohinder huffed before moving on. "Have you exhibited any extra-normal abilities? Some of the examples in my father's book are flight or cellular regeneration. Things like that." When Mohinder spoke of them, he sounded not incredulous, but also not like a true believer---something in the middle, something more objective, but still excited. Gabriel knew that the approach it sounded like Mohinder took was more reliable than Chandra's wide-eyed fervor, but he _wanted_ to believe, didn't want to be dissuaded.

"No," he pouted, "but that doesn't mean I should be discounted. He said I was on a list he has of people with the genetic marker. Maybe whatever it is just hasn't kicked in yet. Or maybe it's even better than the examples he's already thought of."

"Maybe," Mohinder mused. He took a deep breath before continuing, "Gabriel, I know it's been a long time, but I've thought a lot about you since we were last in touch. My father's research aside, this is… you have no idea how ecstatic I am to hear from you, to actually hear your voice for the first time. This… this is already becoming an important day for me, and it's only 9am."

"I know. I checked the time difference before I called," Gabriel grinned.

"Of course you did," Mohinder replied with a laugh.

He sounded sincere, genuine, everything that was encouraging. Gabriel picked that moment to apologize. "I'm sorry it's been so long. I wrote you, you know, last year, but it came back months after I sent it. I guess you'd left the university and gone back to India by then."

"It isn't your fault. I should have written, too. But yes, I finished in June, and then my mother fell ill and so I took a lot of time off to take care of her before I started teaching."

It had been so long since he'd been in touch with Mohinder, and even when they had been, this was the sort of everyday real life thing that they didn't usually write about,, and so Gabriel was hesitant and awkward as he replied, "I'm sorry. Is she ok now?"

But Mohinder was thinking of other things, it turned out. "Yes, yes, everything is fine now," he rushed. "Listen, I have a proposition for you."

"Yeah?"

"Would you consent to becoming _my_ lab rat instead of my father's? That way we can see I know almost as much about his theories as he does. And given that you and I already have a relationship…"

"Do we?" Gabriel gulped. The irrational feelings he had spent so many years repressing flooded back at the possible meaning those words could have.

"Unless you're a different Gabriel Gray than the one I spent most of my life writing to," Mohinder quipped, not seeming to even have noticed how what he'd said could be otherwise interpreted.

Gabriel was noting that Mohinder was less earnest and more sarcastic in person than in writing.

"Well…" Gabriel was caught between two battling desires, one to pursue this path with Chandra, whom instinct told him must have more knowledge about Gabriel's potential ability than his son.

"I could come to see you in New York," Mohinder continued to argue. "I could… I could be there this week, if you are also free."

"Don't you have to teach?" Gabriel asked. This was all happening very fast and all of the old insecurities were returning. What if Mohinder would come and look down on him? What if they wouldn't actually get along, despite the relative ease of this phone conversation?

"It's May. My classes have finished. I'm only in the office because it's where I get research done. There are no official duties keeping me here for the rest of the summer." There was something desperate in Mohinder's voice, but Gabriel couldn't figure out exactly what about. It didn't make any sense.

"Why? Why would you do this? Why would you want to steal his research for his theory? I mean, didn't you go into genetics to make your dad proud of you? Wouldn't doing this defeat the purpose?" Mohinder had never actually said it in so many words, but Gabriel had always known it to be true.

There was a pause, and Gabriel wondered if he had struck uncomfortably _too_ close to home.

"I went into this field to try to make a difference. Keeping you from my father is one way to do that. I promise that I will help you discover all there is to know if indeed you are one of the people in my father's book. He's a hard man, Gabriel. Read the book, and if you're still interested, send me an email, and I can be in New York within a few days. It's up to you… and we could actually meet, after all this time."

Gabriel could hear Mohinder pleading, struggling to hold back his pride, and therefore he couldn't say no. What if he was special? No matter how shabby and unworthy he might feel about his life in comparison to Mohinder's, that would make up for it. "Alright," he agreed. "What's your email address?"

****************************************************

_Dear Gabriel,_

I've been waiting impatiently for your email and your decision. It felt like old times again. I have managed to get a ticket and am leaving this evening, but since it's last minute and I did it with FF miles, it's a bit roundabout. My final leg from London should get me in at around 5 in the afternoon tomorrow, your time. I'll give you a call as soon as I have checked into my hotel.

I can hardly believe that I am about to close this email by saying:

See you soon,  
Mohinder

****************************************************

A strange woman had to help Mohinder get his enormous suitcase off the baggage carousel. Mohinder sheepishly thanked her, feeling like a poof for needing assistance. But after almost sixteen hours spent traveling---none of them spent sleeping for nerves---Mohinder wasn't at his strongest. He was slightly delirious as he passed through the final security and baggage check and walked through the hallway that led to the arrivals area where people were picked up. It was a delirium not caused solely by tiredness and jet lag.

He held his head high, looking past the throngs for the sign for the Airtrain that would connect him with the rest of the public transportation to take him into Manhattan, but he stopped at the sight of his name---not his own name, but Gabriel Gray's name---written in big marker letters on a piece of white paper. Mohinder looked above the paper to see the face of the person holding it. He was very tall, and pale, and wearing huge black glasses that obscured what looked like a nice face… a _very_ nice face, actually. At first glance, he seemed quiet, humble, intelligent, the opposite of superficial---everything Mohinder had always liked about him in theory. Despite the fact that he was alone in a strange country with no one but this in some ways stranger he was about to meet (his father didn't count, as he had no intention of letting him know that he was in town, stealing his subjects), Mohinder's nerves were now all replaced by excitement. There was something about Gabriel that made Mohinder even gladder that he had come. There was something about him that needed protecting, somehow; it had come through over the phone, and it was even more apparent in person.

They made eye contact. Mohinder had connected first in Frankfurt and then in Paris (getting a flight at the last minute had not left him much choice), and he knew that although Gabriel initially blended into the crowd, he must have immediately spotted Mohinder, who was the only Indian man of the right age on his flight. His chapped lips slowly spread into a smile as Gabriel's eyebrows raised in a questioning sign of recognition and his jaw slackened.

No one would have known it for calm and smiling exterior he presented, but Mohinder's heart was pounding as he approached. Here, after all these years, was the mysterious Gabriel.

"Nice sign," he said in a sarcastic but still friendly greeting. "Usually, you know, people put up the names of the people they're waiting to _meet_, not their own name." Mohinder immediately regretted saying this, for Gabriel blushed bright red and looked even shier than he had a moment ago.

"Oh. I didn't realize. Well, anyway, you spotted me, so it worked, didn't it?"

Mohinder grinned. "Yes, it did." Then he stopped and stood stiffly, not sure what to do now or what level of intimacy might expect. He held out his hand and said, "Well, I'm Mohinder. It's nice to meet you."

Gabriel looked hurt at the coldness, but stuck his hand out as well. "I fig---" he began, but then Mohinder thought better of it and interrupted him by clasping him in a bear hug.

"This is wonderful!" he exclaimed, with an effort at energy. "I'm sorry if I'm acting strange. I'm terribly exhausted and not feeling quite myself. And I have to admit, I've been nervous the entire way about meeting not just a potential evolved human, but _you._"

Gabriel beamed. "Me, too. Hey, let me help you with your bag. What do you have in here, rocks?" he asked as he tried to pull one of them behind him towards the direction of the Air Train.

"Books. I brought everything I thought I might need for this study," Mohinder replied. "How did you know where to meet me? I didn't send you my flight itinerary or even what airport I was coming into. I was going to try to brave this on my own and then call you once I'd checked in and made myself decent. I'm afraid you've caught me at my worst."

Gabriel was giving him that look again, the one Mohinder didn't quite know what to make of. "Yeah, but I thought it would be more hospitable to come meet you. I figured out what flights left Chennai last night and how they might connect to get you here from London around now. There was nothing coming into Newark, so it had to be here."

Mohinder was impressed. "Good sleuthing."

"Eh, I'm good at stuff like that," Gabriel said with a modest shrug. "You could stay with me, you know. You didn't have to have booked a hotel."

Mohinder gave him a piercing look. For someone who for so many years had obviously hid so much, Gabriel was being surprisingly open right now. Mohinder wasn't suspicious, as such---he was a trusting person in general, and he would have been hard-pressed to start entertaining suspicions about someone he'd known basically since childhood---but the sudden change was intriguing. He had no idea what might have sparked it. "You're very kind, but I didn't think it would have been polite to impose. You know me, but you don't really know what I'm like day-to-day, or how you might like me as a houseguest. I've gotten feedback that I'm generally a pain in the ass. Messy, disorganized, the whole lot. You've always struck me as a very orderly person. I might drive you mad."

Gabriel gazed at him even more intensely. "I'm willing to take the risk."

Mohinder clasped Gabriel's arm. It was actually more muscular than he would have expected from one so lanky and wearing such characteristically nerdy clothes. "Let's give it a couple of days and then reassess. What do you say?"

"Sure."

They walked the rest of the way to the Airtrain in silence. Mohinder sneaked glances at his companion, and caught him sneaking glances of his own. All those intermittently confused feelings he'd during his childhood came rushing back. Gabriel, the faceless enigma, now had a face… and it was actually rather a handsome one (although Mohinder longed to reach out his index finger and pull those hideous glasses off by the nose bridge). He was simultaneously different and yet exactly like what Mohinder had imagined all this time. Different in terms of the wardrobe, awkwardness, and height (in his vague little fantasies about meeting the man, Mohinder hadn't felt this short), but similar in terms of the intensity and air of pride and insecurity that hung around him.

Gabriel's next set of leading questions may have---Mohinder couldn't be _quite_ sure, of course---demonstrated that Gabriel was thinking along the same lines. "So, how are you doing this? I mean, being here without your dad knowing? Didn't you have to tell your mom you were leaving town? And your girlfriend, too…"

Mohinder stared straight ahead to spare Gabriel the embarrassment of knowing that his blush had been observed. Luckily, the train was pulling into the station and he could pretend to be paying attention to dragging the bags into the car. The two men collapsed into neighboring seats, and Mohinder finally answered, "I told my mother that I was going on a research trip to far-flung locales. I have a hard time telling outright lies to her. I'm sure you feel the same way."

"Uhhh," Gabriel hesitated. He didn't really know. It was true, although he wasn't sure how Mohinder had figured that out, but Gabriel dealt with it by simple cutting himself off from his old home.

"And," Mohinder continued, "I don't have a girlfriend anymore. We were going to get married, but… it didn't work out."

"Sorry to hear that," Gabriel mumbled. But he didn't sound sorry at all. And that's when a wave of relief and understanding washed over Mohinder. Gabriel had the same confused feelings, too.

This was not going to be his usual research trip, if had ever been.

"It's fine. It was one of a few things I was dealing with last year… I could have used you, you know. You just disappeared. Why?" he challenged.

"I don't know. You probably do. I'm sorry. For what it's worth, I could have used you, too."

"I had a feeling. Well, I'm here now. Here to help you, with whatever you want help with." It occurred to Mohinder that he hadn't yet once remembered the less personal aspect of this visit. "So… have you read the book? What do you think of what my father had to say? Do you think you have exhibited any of the symptoms?"

"No, not yet, but I'm sure I could or will. I feel it."

Gabriel sounded so pained, so desperate, that Mohinder hoped it was true, for Gabriel's sake, not for the theory's. "We'll figure it out, I promise. And in the meanwhile…" He smiled and let the sentence dangle suggestively, watching in anticipation as Gabriel got that _look_ again.

 

THE END


End file.
